The Train Is Not A Metaphor
by Bialy
Summary: For phollie. There are worse things than death, and one of them is the consequences of cheating it. And there's the devil himself in L's smile as he says, 'this way'. L and Mello after their stories end. Spoilers. Bad language. Ongoing.
1. The Waiting Room

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. Lyrics lines are The Racing Rats by Editors.

Note 1: This is for phollie. This is because she wanted something with L and Mello in and I am a finicky bitch who won't write something predictable and would rather write something useless and weird and follow some string of an idea down to its end. Much bad language. Much spoilers. Hideous plot. Worse characterisation. Come along for the ride.

Note 2: Doctor's surgeries are kind of like clinics? Like, they're not in hospitals, they're where you can go if you feel unwell but not massively.

Note 3: The train really isn't a metaphor.

x

**The Train Is Not A Metaphor**

_standing at the edge of your town_  
_with the skyline in your eye _

_you knew you were lost  
but you carried on anyway_

_- _

There is a church on the road ahead when the feeling in his chest begins.

It's sudden, and painful, and Mello knows precisely what is happening. He doesn't have to hear Takada's strangled scream from the back to understand that these are the last forty seconds of his life.

Whatever invisible hand is seizing his heart winds its way round his brain, as well. His thoughts fly in a hundred directions and he tries to gather together last thoughts, last seconds of cognition and consciousness before whatever comes next, but he can't. All he can do is think about seconds slipping away.

Twenty seconds to live.

Nineteen seconds to live.

Eighteen seconds to live and _dammit think something inspirational _–

His rosary is hot against his chest and the church is coming up on the left.

_God fucking damn you, Kira, I'm not letting you have this one._

He puts his foot down as hard as he can on the gas because if there's ever been a time for reckless driving it's now, and oh, Matt would be proud, and the church is closer and closer and any faster and the truck'll rip in two, so he keeps his foot to the floor and veers _left_ –

Five seconds before the heart attack gets him, the impact does. Flames erupt around him and everything goes black.

-

"Wake up, Mello. It's time to go."

The first coherent thought he can pull together is how damn cliché that is. _Time to go_, his ass. They could have thought of something better. They've only got, oh, you know, _eternity_ to figure that shit out.

"Come on, Mello. The train's leaving soon."

Train's leaving, fucking hell, if all of the afterlife is going to be this predictable Mello'll go back and sit in the burning cab truck, thank you very much. Fucking train's leaving.

"If you miss this one, you'll miss him. He's already on board."

This time, Mello actually musters a reply.

"On board, miss this one, train's leaving, fucking hell. Get over yourself."

He sits up, one hand against his head, and opens his eyes.

There are no trains in sight. The room he is in is familiar, and he can't work out why. But crouched next to him is a person he _can_ remember, someone he _can _work out. It's the same shaggy head of hair he remembers, the same sloppy white shirt, the same –

"L?!"

His voice sounds strange when it bounces back to his ears. It sounds different, all hollow and padded at once. It shakes in him, in his bones, and he feels that in this one moment he is all his thoughts and all his words and everything he has ever felt.

It's a strange feeling. Mello isn't sure he likes it.

The man crouching next to him leans back onto his heels and smiles. "In the flesh. So to speak."

"But you're dead!" Mello blurts out, before realising that's a patently ridiculous exception to take to all of this, because he's dead, too.

"Indeed." L cocks his head, and says, "your eyes look very different, Mello."

And Mello wants to laugh. Here he is, dead, seven years since L last saw him, half his face burnt off and every plane of him broader and bolder and different, and L looks at him, picks out the _one_ thing that hasn't changed, and says 'your eyes look very different, Mello'.

Mello has so much, so very much he wants to ask this man, but none of the words are coming. Instead, he's asking, 'who'. "Where is this place? Is it – is this Heaven?"

_Is this Heaven_ sounds back at him from the walls and his bones, juvenile and tinny, and all of a sudden he is twelve years old and running away from Wammy's and the skinny man by the gates is saying he'll tell him a story if he'll just stay a while and listen.

A jerky kind of shrug rolls of L's shoulders. "This is the doctor's surgery."

And looking around, it is. The same healthy eating posters hang on the walls, but in monochrome. The rows of dipped-back chairs lining the walls are shades of grey, and the pale green carpet is a crisp white. Mello looks at his own hands, and sees that they are the sole vibrant thing here. Out of the corner of his eye he can still see the gold of his hair, and focusing, the blue denim of L's jeans.

"This is where they used to take us," he says. "The Wammy kids. For check-ups. And when we were sick."

L nods. "I know. I remember it. I used to come here when I was a child."

Absurdly, the only thing it occurs to him to say is, "You got sick?"

L laughs. Mello has never heard him laugh before. The slope of him is different somehow, different to that man who had stopped him at the gates all those years ago. He notices suddenly how different L really does look. He searches his face vainly, trying to pinpoint what it is, what's missing, and then he hits on it. The bags under his eyes are gone. He looks calm. He looks happy.

He looks at peace.

"Do you know," L says, then, "they couldn't find anyone to take you through?"

"Take me – what?" None of this is making any sense to Mello. He's sat here – dead – right next to his _idol_, to the man he's based his life around, and nothing L is saying is making any sense. "Listen, L. Did you work it out? Did you know it was Yagami? You did, didn't you? If Near can, then you – how did he get your position? Does he have the shinigami eyes? What about Amane, was she involved? Was she -?"

"Mello." L's voice cuts across his, soft and unassuming, but Mello falls silent right away. "I hate to be the one to tell you, but you can't make a difference there anymore."

Mello's clenches his fists. "He _killed_ you. He killed you, don't you want revenge? You're so calm – take me where?"

All his thoughts are colliding into each other and everything has stopped making sense.

L is still smiling, very gently. "You are dead."

"I know."

"You cheated your death."

Mello blinks. "But you just said –"

"You didn't cheat _death_. Just _your_ death. And that means you ended up here. In the waiting room."

"Of the doctor's surgery."

"Yes. Waiting for the train."

"I thought you said I was going to miss the train?"

L scratches his chin. "Yes. The train's there and not there, you see. It's all very philosophical. Essentially...you're here until you work things out. And until the train comes."

"But you said the train was _there_."

"There and not there. It'll take you years to understand it. I wouldn't even try if I were you."

It makes his head spin. What the hell was this? Trains that were there and not there? Here until he works things out? This was ridiculous. And stupid. He'd spent all his life believing that when he got done with all his living crap, he'd be facing down St Peter who would either give him the thumbs up or the thumbs down, and that would be that. Either way, the puzzles and the intricacies and the here-and-not-heres would be over.

Now L's sat there, and telling him it isn't like that at all.

"You didn't listen to me, did you?"

"What?"

"You're trying to understand it." L's smile widens a little. "Don't."

Mello lies back down on the floor. The ceiling is high and very plain and white. That's like he remembers it, at least.

"Go on then," he says. "Explain."

It's a weird feeling, this. He's talking to L with none of the reverence he has for the man, and none of the arrogant, manufactured dismissal he'd injected his tone with the first and last time they'd met. He's talking to him like he's Matt or something. Maybe it's death. Maybe it makes you treat people differently. Evens the playing field.

Then it hits him.

"Matt? Where's Matt?"

Something clouds L's face and Mello feels his insides go cold.

"What?" he asks. His voice is heavy and deadly and dark and _this_ is what he has learnt, in the years of loneliness and dirt and secrets, this bitter and commanding tone.

"I'm not here to talk to you about Matt, Mello."

"Talk to me about him anyway." He narrows his eyes and can see the flicker of disquiet behind the blankness of L's black stare. That's right, he thinks, that's right, I'm not that little boy anymore. I'm different and I'm changed and at the end of the day that is _your fault_.

A small part of him has always resented L, always hated him. Mello has never in his life been First. He was the second child. He got the castoffs, the hand-me-downs, and he was always second best. He was the second most important child to arrive at the orphanage on the day he got there, he was the second letter 'M' in the roster. And he has always, always, been second to Near.

L has always, effortlessly, been First, and it has always been L he has to live up to, L that created impossible standards Mello will never achieve. And now it is L sitting there, sitting there not telling him what's going on and not telling him what is happening to his best friend.

L studies him intently and Mello can feel his eyes raking over the bare, skinless half of his face. He can feel a question in his gaze, and lets it go unanswered.

"L," he says, urgency in his tone.

L draws a breath. "You cheated your death. You cheated the Death Note."

"Yeah? And?"

"That means you cheated the Gods of Death, Mello."

As if someone has suddenly plugged a cord into his brain, he understands. Life is in a delicate balance, and so is death. The Death Notes have their rules and those rules _can't_ be broken, but Mello, Mello in his infinite capacity for tearing and ruining and destruction, _has_ broken one. And that cannot happen. That cannot be _allowed_ to happen.

"Someone has to pay the price," L is saying quietly, and Mello gets to his feet.

He feels like he should be afraid. He feels like he should be sick with regret and panic and worry for Matt. He feels like he should be anxious, should be desperate, should be frantic.

He isn't.

What he is is _angry_.

He is shaking. He clenches his fists. He's never been good at controlling his temper. Next to him, L stands up.

"I am here to take you through," L says. "I am here because no one else you have ever met wanted the job of telling you that you were dead and making you face the regrets and mistakes of your life. They seemed to feel you would become aggressive."

Mello turns to look at him and there is fire sparking in him now. He knows this feeling, knows it oh so well, and oh, if the shinigami thought they could play this game against him and win then they have another thing coming. He is Mihael motherfucking Keehl, he's God damn _Mello_, and no one is going to fuck with his best friend except him. No fucker under the sun, or above it, or _behind_ it, and now there's nowhere to run because now he's angry and Heaven help the son of a bitch who crosses his path.

"Yeah?" he says. His voice is remarkably level. The shaking is stilling and he can feel his temper icing into cold fury and _this_ is when he gets dangerous. "Well they were right. I _am_ going to get aggressive."

And then L does something Mello did not expect.

He smiles.

"I had a feeling you might. As a matter of fact, that's why I volunteered."

Mello turns to him, surprise masked by suspicion. "What do you mean? Aren't you supposed to be – what'dyou say, making me face shit from my life so I can go onto the train or whatever?"

L inclines his head. "That is precisely what I am supposed to be doing. But, Mello, you are forgetting one crucial thing."

"What's that then?"

L's smile widens. "That I am L. And I do not take kindly to being told what to do. And I do not take kindly to those who perceive destiny as a fixed line, an unchallengeable constant."

Mello looks L straight in the eye. He realises they are nearly the same age now, and that he has been in the world and he has been _through_ the world, and he has loved and lost and fought and kicked and spat and _everything_, and maybe it's not death that makes him feel like he's L's equal now after all.

"What are you saying?"

L shrugs. "It seems unlikely you are going to simply let this go and take your seat on the train. And I must say, I have always relished the idea of working with you."

A slow smile spreads across Mello's face, and in the odd shadows of the surgery, for a second it looks like the gaunt and tired lines of L's face are back. But underneath it is something different, something hard and blazing and fierce, and Mello knows damn well that in some ways he's always been more like L than Near was.

"There is a back door, of course," L says. "Another choice. I am not meant to tell you about it."

Mello's already made up his mind. Fuck the train. It's a stupid cliché anyway. "What's the second choice?"

"To the Plains of Dust."

"Plains of Dust?" Mello feels the weight of the words on his tongue. He savours them. He can't feel his heart beating and he knows his blood isn't flowing but he can feel _something_ humming through him, some strong and strange feeling, something close and ferocious and incredible. This is the power he's been built with, this madness, this wildness, and standing next to him is perhaps the one man who has ever lived who will quite understand.

"It's quite a risk." L's voice is conversational. "I have been led to believe there are worse things than death."

"Led to believe?"

"I've always wanted to test the theory out."

Mello grins, and he feels vicious and powerful and ready for anything. He can feel his old, barbaric laughter bubbling through him. Any other day, he might have let it go. Any other day and he might have accepted the death fate had dealt him, gone peacefully onto the train and laid his worries to rest.

Any other day.

But the thing is, this isn't any other day. This is the day Matt died to buy him a last chance. This is the day when Mello has come to the decision that _nothing, _not life or death or anything in between, is going to keep him from paying the favour back.

"Right," he says. "Back door?"

There's the devil himself in L's smile as he says, "this way."


	2. The Back Door

Note:

I have discovered I am very bad at a) planning b) sticking to plans c) writing Mello from inside Mello's head d) staying on topic in stories with some sort of plot. By the end of this story I hope to have made some progress towards remedying some of these. If you see any improvement, I would be grateful if you would let me know. Equally, if you have any suggestions, throw 'em at me.

If you hate what I have done here, I am sorry for subjecting you to it. But this is an experiment. Sometimes, experiments fail.

x

The Back Door  
_  
rate yourself and rake yourself  
take all the courage you have left_

_-_

"It's a corridor."

"Or a tunnel, depending on your perspective."

"No, it's a _corridor_."

"As you wish."

Mello and L are standing at the door to the doctor's office. Only, there is no desk, and no examining table, and no white curtain. Instead, there is a long corridor, dimly lit from Mello doesn't know where, windowless and shadowy. At the end, Mello can just about make out a door.

It looks exactly like the front door to the surgery, as he remembers it. Plastic, with a small window at the top, a letterbox in the middle. White. It is an ordinary door.

"That's not the back door," Mello says, dubiously. "Is it?"

L shrugs. "I don't know. I have never been here before."

"But you said –"

"I have been to the surgery, certainly. But my waiting room was very different."

"What was it?" Mello can feel curiosity burst up inside him. This is strange, this is _incredible_, this is insight into L he's never had a chance to get close to before.

L smiles coyly. "We are all allowed some secrets, are we not?"

As quickly as it came, the curiosity shrivels into disappointment. Mello feels strange – vibrant and alive and as if everything is exaggerated a hundredfold.

"Right. Door. Let's go."

This door could be all that's separating him from Matt – from all the big bad beasties of this after-world and his chance to show them precisely who they have decided to mess with. Eight long paces, filled with purpose, filled with fire, and he'll be there.

Only the corridor isn't shortening. The door isn't getting closer. Mello stops, and turns around, and he _knows_ L has not moved, but the distance between them has remained exactly the same.

"What the _fuck_?"

He spins back around, quickens his pace, and there is still nothing. He runs. He can feel the ground moving under his feet, hear his boots smack against the ground, and see the little lights dotting the walls flick past him and _why the fucking hell is the fucking door still all the fucking way over - fucking - there?_

"It doesn't work that way," says L, from behind him. "This place doesn't follow the normal rules."

Mello rounds on him, frustration and fury crackling over his skin and channelling like electricity through his veins. "Then how _does _it work? What _are_ the rules?"

"Sadly, you must work it out for yourself."

L is calm and composed and slouching against the wall, and it strikes Mello how _weak_ he looks. He is just this skinny man, none of the muscle Mello has, none of the grace of Near or the lopsided longness of Matt. He is skinny and awkward and ugly and _smug_ and _calm_ and isn't it his fault Mello is here in the first place? Isn't _he_ the one –

"Just _tell_ me."

"I cannot do that, Mello."

He feels his lips pull back in a sneer, and it's automatic, it's instinct. "Thought you were all about breaking the rules.

L looks at him strangely. There is something like vague disappointment in his eyes, and Mello feels the crackle of rage once again. It is getting harder and harder to keep control. "You're still thinking wrong, Mello."

_You're thinking wrong, Mello_.

_Years and years ago crouched under the side porch of the orphanage, unwilling to go back inside, as rain starts to fall. This strange skinny man who met him at the gate is crouched with him, and Mello is fuming and firing off his tongue every which way about how much he hates this place, how much he hates them all, how much he hates _L_. He is saying how he hates being told what to do, how he hates being confined this way, how he can't stand how they make it so clear he's never going to be more than the back-up back-up. And the strange and skinny man with the dark eyes and goose bumps running up the pale skin of his neck, he sits there, and he says, "You're thinking wrong, Mello."_

_And before Mello even thinks to ask how he knows who he is, the man has begun his story._

"Why am I thinking wrong?" Mello challenges him. His nails dig into the palms of his hands.

L spreads his hands. The corridor is not wide, and his fingertips are less than an inch from the walls. "You are thinking like you're alive."

Mello snorts. "Might come as a surprise to you, but I haven't been dead for as long as _some_ of us. I'm not used to it."

"Understandable," L concedes. "But not acceptable."

"Yeah? Who decides that?"

L is still giving him that strange from underneath the shadow of his fringe. "No one decides it, Mello. It is simply the way things are."

A wicked little smile pulls Mello's lips back over his teeth. "I've gotten quite good at going against _the way things are_."

"Not here," L says, and there is something scathing underneath the cut of his tone. He turns to look at Mello and the dark corridor stretches out behind him. "Back when we were alive, things were different. 'The way things are' meant society, or physics, and there were very clear lines between what could and what could not be challenged. It is _different_ here. You cannot challenge these rules. And you cannot even try to learn them. Here, everything changes, everything balances on the edge of the knife, and everything is _temporary_ and _fixed_ all at once."

Mello begins to step forward, begins to clench his fist and draw breath for his retort, when he notices the look in L's eye. It is distant, and hard and cold, and _hurt_. It is the look of a wounded animal; feral, afraid, and dangerous. Something shifts in the semi-light and for a second L seems completely translucent, and Mello knows he is probably imagining it, but he thinks he can see scars under L's skin.

"There are consequences to disobeying the rules," he says, and in that instant, with the shadow of his eyes and the pale glimmer of skin, nothing has ever seemed truer.

Mello drops his gaze. "What happened to you?" he asks, and can hear the uncertainty trembling in his voice. There is something deeply sickening about the scars he can see glinting in and out of existence just under L's surface. He gets this hideous feeling from them, like agony, like coldness and horror and the wordless terror of pitch dark.

"I have to tell you something, Mello." L's voice is very even, and it is very calm. "Outside this door is a truly great danger. I am not speaking of the kind of intangible threat Kira posed. This is immediate, physical peril and you have to know something. You cannot act like a child out there."

The scars are still sickening but Mello looks past them to L's eyes, with fury brewing. "Are you telling me that _I _act –"

"You're not listening!" The temper rising in L's tone shocks him. He's met him once, heard him over a computer twice. The voice has always, always been level. This is first crackle of emotion he has heard run through. "Mello, if you are going to view this as a game, as a test, as a way of carrying on your anti-establishment agenda after your time has come, you are going to _fail_. I have tried, Mello, I've tried, I have been out there! The simple fact of the matter is I have been here _longer_, I am _smarter_, and still _I failed!_"

Mello feels a kind of flush staining his cheeks. He's not used to this. He's not used to being chided like an idiot kid and actually caring. But this – this is different. This is L. He avoids his gaze.

"What are you saying? That it's hopeless?" He can't help but grit his teeth, can't help but let the words snarl out. "That Matt is - ?"

"_No._" L has moved, somewhere in between fury and rebukes and disappointment, and his hands come down on Mello's shoulders. There's maybe two inches between them in height, Mello realises, and L has the advantage. For a change. "What I am saying is that it _will_ be hopeless unless you are doing this for the right reasons."

"The right...?" Oh, Jesus, it's more airy fairy bullshit. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means that you have to be doing this for him. Not for you." There is something like distaste in L's voice but he is looking at Mello insistently, silently begging him to understand. "Mello, this is not a glory trip. This is not one last crusade before oblivion. This is not life and death and victory, this is your last chance to do something that will matter."

_Something that will matter_ and there is a cold and heavy thing dropping through Mello's stomach.

He is twenty years old. He is a black leather demon, he is a match in a fireworks factory, he is a mess of unstoppability and recklessness and power and he mars and changes everything he touches. And here, standing before him, is the only man in his entire life whose respect he has ever given a shit about earning.

And he does not think that anything Mello had ever done has mattered.

It is probably that that is the last straw.

"My entire life."

He is shaking. His fists are clenched.

"My whole entire fucking life has been spent – I _died_ trying to – I managed to work out – _and you stand there and you say_ – my entire life I've been –"

"- trying to live up to me." L's voice is calm and cold and his eyes fix on Mello's face. "What have you ever done that mattered to you as a person? To your friends?" He shakes his head. "You are still such a child. Stop seeing everything as a personal slight against you. Think first, for once, and act second. Stop fighting Kira, stop trying to be _me_. Stop trying to –"

The next words that Mello says have been on his lips for nearly fifteen years. They are a product of anger, of frustration, of an inferiority complex that has coloured and distorted every single thing he has done since he was six years old. And they have been brewing for too long to stop them now.

"_I never wanted to be you!_"

His voice bounces back from the walls and L is silent.

Then, he says, "then, _don't_."

Don't. He makes it sound so fucking simple that Mello actually just _laughs_, right in his face, right in the fact of the world's greatest detective.

"You don't think I see how _disgusting_ it is?" L brings his face very close to Mello's and there is a colour in the thinness and paleness of his cheeks that hits home with Mello. This is the deep, feral _hiss_ Mello is so used to hearing himself use. This, he realises, this is the L that L has worked so hard to bury from the world, and this is the only thing Mello has ever been good at.

"We take you. We twist you. We break you down and reshape you in a mould that was never meant to exist in the first place. I am a _freak_, Mello, a one-off, an anomaly, and no amount of effort is going to recreate me. _I_ am L, not you, or Near, or _any_ of you! It is a sickness and a madness and you are all built up to be something you can _never_ be, and don't you think I can see how that _destroys_ you?" L draws a breath. It hitches, halfway, and just that little thing tells Mello more than all of L's words. "You, Mello, you have this _chance_ here. You have this chance to be amazing and to be a hero and to save the day and the only condition is that you do it _by being who you are."_

Mello turns his face away. His cheeks are burning. "I don't know how to be anything but _you_."

L makes a dismissive noise and turns to face the doorway. The corridor looks darker somehow.

"Please, Mello. You and I both know you are no fool. Think. It is obvious. You must stop doing things because you feel like it is your duty, or because it is the right thing to do." He turns a little, his eyes shadowed and dark, and the innocence and clearness of his face in this place makes for a frightening contrast. "You must do them because it would kill you, because it would tear you into pieces every single day, if you did not."

There is an edge of finality in his voice, and Mello does not ask any more questions.

Something in him has gone quiet. He does not feel like a scolded little boy now – resentful, embarrassed, and devastated by his idol's scorn. He does not feel like a blazing and angry warrior, he does not feel like the mafia angel in black and gold. He does not feel like Mello at all.

He feels twenty years old and stuck between the awkward planes of boyhood and manhood. He feels lonely and lost and scared and sick, and terrified by the knowledge that he is _dead_. He feels the loss of a life he had not even begun to live, but most of all, he feels calm.

Mello cannot ever remember feeling calm in his entire life.

He is calm because he knows precisely what it is he has to do now. Mello knows because if there is one thing, one single thing he is certain about, it is that Matt is his best friend and Matt has lived and died for him. He is calm because he has come to the sudden realisation that if something is threatening Matt then there is no force in existence that can stop Mello from helping.

If it takes every last gasp – whatever gasps he has left, in this place, this non-life, this waiting room – then he will give it. If it means oblivion and destruction, he will welcome it. If it means darkness and terror and abandoning every safeguard then that is simply what it will mean.

Just like that, everything seems easy.

Mello walks down the corridor. The door gets closer and closer with each step, and when he reaches it, he walks straight through it. He does not hesitate. He knows that the door won't stop him, just as the corridor could no longer hold him back. Matt is on the other side of that door, so that is where Mello has to be. It is as simple as that.

A new scene melts into focus and the silence is deafening. All around is nothing. A dark and sandy plain spreads out in every direction, as far as the eye can see, fading in the distance into an impenetrable curtain of black.

L appears next to him. Mello looks back. There is no door. Just more sand, and sky, and dark.

"It's a terrible cliché," L says, "but I think it means that when you know who you are, knowing what you have to do comes easy. And nothing can stand in your way."

"Where are we?" Mello asks.

"The Plains of Dust."

He looks around. Nothing, nothing, nothing. No signs of the right direction to go in, no signs of there being anything but the plains anyway he could pick.

So he thinks about it. He thinks how L has always managed to have all his bases covered, moving in every direction at once. He thinks how it's Near's trademark to sidestep, to disappear into the mists at the last moment. He thinks how Matt will always back away from things that don't matter, will always let things go.

And Mello does the only thing he has ever done, and moves forward.

L falls into pace beside him. Mello has never really watched him walk before. It's an odd lope, lengthy and graceful and awkward at once.

"What was it for you?"

L looks at him curiously. All of the heat and temper and animosity from the corridor seem to have evaporated. "I'm sorry?"

"For you. What got you through the door?"

L smiles a flickering little smile. "It is perfectly acceptable for me to act like L," is all he says.

But Mello can see something else in the edges of that smile. "No, there's more to it than that." L was right; they both know he is no fool.

"You are quite right, Mello. And perhaps in time I will tell you. For now, I believe we have a higher purpose than idle chit-chat."

Mello smiles his wicked smile again, but this time, it is different, and he can feel it. All the hollowness and ghoulishness has been washed away, and now, here he is. Mello. Moving forward, through the dust, because it is the only thing that makes sense.

And it is time for him to finally do something that matters.


	3. The Plains of Dust

Note: This is the chapter where I have finally got my head around this story, and this world. And I am finally beginning to like it. I hope you will too. Lyrics: Put Up A Fight by My Awesome Compilation.

The Plains of Dust

_all these small chances will one day  
add up to everything_

_put up a fight  
i believe in you_

-

"So listen, L," Mello says. He thinks they've probably been walking for about ten minutes. He has no idea where he is going, what will be there when he gets there, or where he is. He has been drowning in his mind right up until this very moment, with the thoughts of all the implications of the fact that _Matt_ is how he defines himself.

"I am listening."

"I get now that there's a lot you can't tell me. Stuff I've got to work out for myself – Christ, we're in a movie, aren't we? – but can you at least, maybe, fill me in a bit about where we are? What's going on?"

L walks in silence for a few moments, before nodding his head once. "Yes. I suppose it has been difficult until now to talk to you."

Mello is surprised. "What do you mean?"

L shrugs one of his jerky, rolling shrugs, like the shaking-out of a raggedy carpet. "You were too lost in yourself. Very angry. Very muddled. It would have been almost impossible to explain anything this strange to you."

Mello smiles a grim little smile. "I dunno, all that business with the Death Note has got me pretty used to believing shit that's unbelievable."

"Perhaps you are right."

"And I'm still angry," Mello reminds him. "I think. I'll decide when I know exactly what it is that's gonna happen to Matt, and what I've got to be angry about."

L's hands dig deeper into his pockets. Mello is starting to notice these odd little things about him; like, the angle of how he's hunched, like, the times when he shakes his hair out of his eyes versus the times he brushes it away with his hand, like, the odd moments when he will curl his bare toes into the graininess and drought of the sand.

He doesn't know what they mean yet and he has this sneaking suspicion that the surest way to insanity is to try to find out. L was right – he is the only one who has ever, is ever, and will ever be L, and it is idiocy and madness to try to work him out.

But Mello is enjoying watching. It isn't insight – more just sight, really – but this is a rare view of L that he thinks not many people have ever seen.

Perhaps no one has. He's been thinking about that, too. How this is L in a way that is new: this is L with the innocence and peacefulness that cannot exist in conjunction with the man he was. It is the bearing and curiosity of an unblemished child, of the way they all must have been before the orphanage, with the intelligence and wisdom and knowledge of the man who has seen the world and been in the world but never, ever managed to be more than an awkward observer.

Mello knows he has to stop thinking like he wants to be L, but even when (_if_, he thinks – habits that you have spent your life perfecting are notoriously hard to break) that happens, he is never going to stop admiring him. This is a man who, when all pretence is stripped away and all sense of modesty and appearances is thrown to the dogs, is happiest in the middle of trouble and alone at the edges of the world. L is sort of this meteorite, Mello thinks, all hard and obvious and _tangible_ – that's all his idiosyncrasies, the bare feet, the chewed thumb, the sweets – but bold with fire, too, with brilliance, something that can be unspeakably beautiful as it torches across the sky and make you suddenly affirm everything about your life, and something that can mar and destroy if it goes even slightly off course.

Over-the-top, Mello decides, that description. But he also decides that that's probably the best, and only, way to describe L. In phrases that conjure the spectacular and the massive and the not-quite-believable, and that are, really, just plain over-the-top.

"Hm," L says. One hand moves from his pocket to his mouth, and he brings his thumb to rest with the tip just between the edges of his teeth. He stops walking.

"What?" Mello asks, turning to face him, halfway into his next step.

L gives him an indecipherable look. "I think before I can tell you very much of any use, you must first tell me what you know about what's going on."

Mello lowers his foot and studies the sand. He has seen sand that is a myriad of colours, all bits of a million different shells blended together into something rough and dry and amazing. He has seen the golden sands of California and the rubbley sands in potted plants in New York. But this sand is different. Sand is a hundred thousand tiny chips of rock worn down by decade after decade, but he has never seen sand look as dead as this. It's still sand-coloured, really, but it seems like it's reflecting grey back at him. Everything seems bleak and endless and dreary and it suddenly occurs to Mello that with no door and no horizon he could quite conceivably be trapped here for all of eternity.

"I know I'm dead," he says, quietly. "I know I died."

"And you may never know how grateful I am for that." L's voice sounds serene and Mello whips up to look at him, not sure that he's heard right.

"You're glad I died?!"

"No, not really. I'm simply glad you understand that you are dead." L turns those blank eyes onto him. "You have no idea the trouble I'm going to have convincing the next one."

"Huh?"

"Hm?"

"Next one?"

"Oh," L says, "that part is difficult to explain. You see, I can sort of see what's coming next, but only bits, and all out of order...you get like that when you've been here a while. Most people are supposed to have moved on by now."

"Why haven't you?" Mello asks.

"I am waiting for someone."

There is a note of finality in L's voice and back behind his eyes, something goes dark and shuts off. He is still looking at Mello and there is a sudden intensity and devastation in his stare that Mello shudders, suddenly and violently. He coughs, turns his head and looks at the sky to try to disguise it, and thinks about the translucent scars.

He does not press L further.

"Right," he says. "I'm dead. I sort of – cheated? I was meant to die of a heart attack from the Death Note, but rammed myself into a church instead. Thought it was clever at the time but turns out that has kind of royally screwed me because shinigami are psychopaths and are taking it out on Matt. No idea how but I'm pretty sure that if anything happens to Matt then it doesn't matter how clever or brave or daring I've been. Because at the end of the day I've already let the bastard _die_ for me. Putting him through hell is just a bit too much to ask."

L's look has gone opaque again, and Mello is glad. He knows back in his mafia days (ha, and that sounds so weird to think, now, after Matt and after everything – _mafia days_) he could come across as terrifying - with wild eyes and guns and little boy blues matched up with blood and bones, and the kind of unhinged mania that meant he sometimes slipped away from himself. And he has seen about twenty three times his fair share of scary shit, too. But L, L just now has unnerved even him.

L inclines his head, and it's not really even half of a nod. "Alright. That is all correct. Then, here is what little else I know: this is, as loosely as I can describe it, an after-life. I do not know if there are others, for those who have lived, perhaps, a little differently to you and I. This, though, this is where I have found some semblance of peace. It has workings like nothing you have ever seen, Mello – it works off intuition, and fear, and mystery, and belief. It is so difficult to explain. Rather, I think it is a thing you must feel, and there is no time for that. Simply know that there are two ways to go."

"The train?" Mello asks.

"The train," L confirms. "I believe it carries us on somewhere. Rather predictable, but there we go. I suppose out of all the clichés of heaven and hell and what happens after death, there was always a chance that one of them would be correct."

"For us, at least."

"Yes. For us."

L looks past Mello's shoulder and out onto the horizon. Mello turns. All he can see is the stretching sands, and then blackness.

"What's out there?" An odd note of apprehension has crept into Mello's voice, and he does not know why. All he knows is that something about that blackness scares him. He feels it niggling at the edge of his brain, and finds himself looking deeper, and deeper, and it's almost as if he can see shapes in the dark.

No. That's madness. From this distance –

_And yet shapes he sees._

Suddenly it is upon him – _fear_. It swamps him, like having a wet and heavy sheet thrown over you and blocking out the light. His throat constricts, his stomach clenches, and no, this is more than fear, this is _panic_, awful and instant and he can feel his breath quickening and heart racing and –

"_Look away_."

L's voice is loud and commanding and it snaps something in Mello out of the mounting hysteria. He jerks his head away. He reaches a hand up to his forehead to steady himself, and he realises he's sweating. He starts taking long, deep breaths.

"What – what the – _what the fuck was that_?"

Shit, he's shaking like mad. He looks over his shoulder. There's nothing fucking there. Just darkness. And he has honestly never been that scared in his life. Or death.

"That is where we are headed," L says heavily. "That is the second way we can go. Out the Back Door. Across the Plains of Dust. Into the Dark Lands. And then..."

Mello waits. L does not continue. "And then?"

L lifts his head, and his lips are drawn into a tight line that looks like the memory of pain. "And that is as far as I have gotten."

Jesus Christ, everything here is as creepy as fuck, isn't it?

"I have a suspicion what comes after, though." L frowns a little, and turns back to the skyline. _How can he just look at it? _he thinks. "I believe that beyond the Dark Lands lies the Shinigami Realm."

"The Shinigami -?!"

"Yes." L narrows his eyes. "And I believe that is where Matt is."

_Matt..._

Drawing a deep breath, Mello turns back to the darkness. He clenches his fists and within a few moments he can feel the panic wrapping itself around his heart again, but this time, he's ready, and this time, he _fights_.

"I'm not afraid of you," Mello says. His voice cracks. He closes his eyes.

He feels terrified. He feels unbearably afraid and alone and vulnerable and _little_.

And it doesn't matter because that is where L believes Matt is, and that means it probably really is where he is.

When he opens his eyes, he believes it.

"_I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU!"_

It is as loud as he can make it, a scream that tears his lungs, rips at his throat, sets his blood on fire because really and truly he has always been the mad one, the wild one, and this is the most alive he has felt in _oh so long_.

"Hear that, shinigami?! _DO YOU HEAR THAT?_ You have my friend and _I am coming for you!_"

He feels feral. A wind starts to rise and from behind him, he can hear L say, "oh dear," and there is a sound like turbines starting and sand starts to slash against his cheeks. There is a distant dark rumble and in his bones he knows that this world is answering him and that the answer is going to be tremendously unfavourable. He knows he is reckless and he knows he is impulsive and he knows that's just the kind of guy he is. He feels _defiant_.

"It probably would be better not to antagonise the gods of death, Mello."

But Mello can hear that lilt in L's voice, that hint of a smile. Because this time, L knows it is not meaningless rebellion – this time, it is the unmatchable feeling of knowing your purpose and gathering your courage and bracing yourself for whatever is inevitable and inviting the ends of everything to throw more at you. It's being so convinced of yourself that you know nothing can stop you.

And it's the mad kind of courage that has underlined every single thing Mello has done since the day he threw his first punch.

The rumbling is reaching up into really more of a roar now, arching and angry. The wind has begun blowing in earnest now and all about him a sandstorm is brewing. Mello looks back, and there's nothing but a sky blurred with grey and brown. Ahead, the same blur, and beyond it, the heavy shadow of the Dark Lands.

"What's it like in there?" he shouts, over the sound of the birthing storm.

"More terrible than anything you can imagine!" L shouts back.

Mello laughs. It's drowned out by the wind and he tastes grit and salt. Sand stings against his scar, harsh and painful, and he winces. He knows it's going to get one hell of a lot worse. "I knew you were gonna say that."

He feels L move up beside him and grasp his hand firmly. "Do not let go," he instructs.

Mello nods, and wraps his hand firmly around L's.

"Onwards?"

"_Onwards!"_

And then, between the sound and the wind and the sand blasting the skin from their faces and tearing the breath from their lungs, there is no more space for words.

Mello focuses on step after step. It becomes harder with each pace and feels as if the entire world is pressing against him. He fights on – step after step. Step. After. Step.

_Step back _is carried to him in the air and it is as insubstantial as a dream so Mello decides to ignore it.

_Where the fuck would I go anyway?_ he thinks.

L's grip is tight and Mello is indescribably glad of his hand. There's a second, somewhere in the middle of it all, when he steps out of himself a little and looks at how mental it is: him, in the middle of an other-worldly sandstorm, dead, holding hands with the man he spent ten years being moulded into, to save a guy who wouldn't even be in danger if Mello himself wasn't such a colossal bell-end.

And oh, if all of everything can come together and bring him smack-bang into the middle of this scene, anything is possible. Step after step.

It's almost like the storm itself can feel him defying it. The wind is howling like a whole fucking pack of wolves, screeching in his ears, and he can barely open his eyes against the sand. He feels L tug on his hand, and then feels his arm pulled forward. L is speeding up. Mello doubles his pace.

And little by little by little, they gain distance.

Mello does not know how long they have been fighting the force of the storm. He knows his skin is raw, he knows that the side of his face feels as if someone has set fire to it all over again and raked sharp nails over his exposed flesh, he knows he has forgotten how to hear. But he is not going to give up.

And then, he feels L's hand slip out of his.

Then he spins round, whip-crack quick, to find him gone.

And then everything goes dark.

A kind of pitch blackness that Mello has never experienced envelops him. He cannot see a thing. He blinks. He blinks again.

And then he isn't sure if he's blinking.

"L?" His voice sounds as if he's shouting into fur, and when he tries to call out again, he hears nothing come back to him.

He can see nothing. He can hear nothing. He can feel nothing.

He sends signals to his body to turn back around and has no idea if he's doing it or not. He thinks his eyes are open, but can't feel it, can't feel his hands to reach up and find out. Every sensation is dead.

And that is when the laughter begins.

It is high and cold and creeping, and it is the only thing that seems to exist in this space. Everything outside his thoughts is dead and dark and nothing and the laugh is getting louder and louder and louder until _out of the dark there is a face._

Red eyes black hair pale pale skin and Mello can see it more in his head than anything else.

And he knows, as certainly as he knows he has never met him, who this is.

The face smiles a wicked Cheshire Cat smile and Beyond Birthday whispers, "Hello there, Mihael Keehl."


	4. The Dark Lands

Note: Today's lyric line is not a lyric line. It is a quote from my favourite play of all time, Othello, by William Shakespeare. Beyond's last line here, "demand me nothing", is also a quote from the play. It's a little reference to one of the most incredible villains in literature that is nice if you get, and hopefully won't detract anything if you don't.

This chapter ran away from me entirely. It got (slightly) homoerotic at a point and I had NO plans for that. And, it's long. At one point I was debating whether or not to make it two chapters, but then went "NAAAAH". So here you are. Also, phollie, I owe you a proper breakdown and all the other stuff. This chapter began deciding where it was going all on its own. It deals with mental descent and I am not good at that. So if this turns out okay, please let me know. Hope you're all enjoying.

x

The Dark Lands

_I'll pour this pestilence into his ear..._

_I am not what I am._

-

Mello has never quite understood the idea of dying of fright until precisely this moment.

The pair of wide red eyes floating in front of him are fixed on his own.

"Who are you?"

It's pointless. He knows who this is, this pale and mad man, and his voice comes soundlessly from his lips, dying the moment it hits the dark.

The face leers, and it is either Mello's imagination or the machinations of this place that makes Beyond's teeth look sharper than any teeth Mello has ever seen.

_Teeth for biting tearing shredding, teeth for rending, teeth for meat, teeth for –_

Mello starts violently, not sure where the hideous ring of those thoughts has come from. But there is a knowing look in those red eyes that he does not like.

"Little Second, little Second, how are we today?" chants Beyond, all sing-song, nursery rhymes hanging behind his voice.

Mello does not answer.

Beyond's look grows disapproving. "Now, now, now, my new friend, don't be impolite. Just because _you_ cannot hear yourself speak, it doesn't mean that I cannot." He smiles again, that pointed-toothed smile. "You learn things, you see, being here this long. Though I expect he told you that."

"You're BB, aren't you?" Mello asks. Again, he cannot hear his voice. But Beyond nods. Out of the darkness, shoulders loom, and the top of a torso. It is like he is standing in a pit of pitch, and leaning out, ever so slowly, like some monster from children's tales come to life and ready to wreak the kind of destruction that people have always spoken of in hushed tones.

"Why yes I am, little Keehl, and you are my successor, are you not?"

_My successor, are you not? My successor, are you not?_

It rings in Mello's mind over and over and eventually he finds enough of his voice so force out, "_what?_"

Beyond chuckles. It is a gurgling sound like underground streams, those ones that lie in the deepest caves when all you can see is shadow and rock and all you can hear is the swell of water. "Of course. That is what you were in life, and that is what I will make you now. Here." Menace flashes across his face like a glance of light. "There's no leaving the dark lands, you know."

"Th – that's a lie." Mello tells himself he believes it, over and over again, because that's the only way he can make the words feel certain. "L got out. And I'm not your successor!"

Beyond's smile spreads wider, and it's as smug as the cat who got the cream. "And yet he came _baaack_."

"He came with me!"

"And don't you wonder why that is?"

Mello is thrown by the question. "What? He came to help me."

Beyond chuckles again and there is this kind of unrestrained _glee _about him, a kind of hideous mania, and a wildness that Mello thinks even he could not match up to.

"Tilt and turn, little Keehl, tilt and turn."

"_What?_"

Beyond does not answer, just carries on chuckling. Then he tips his head back and lets out a yowl of mirth, like whatever's going on, that's the funniest thing in the world. His laugh becomes high and keening and at the edges of it Mello can taste the gathering notes of hysteria, and if there are two things Mello learnt from the LABB murders it is that second place is never safe and Beyond Birthday is _insane_.

Suddenly Beyond's head snaps down, falling barely an inch from Mello's own. His teeth are bared in a macabre smile and his eyes are blood red and disengaged. "L brought you here to die," he says, in a rasping voice, all hisses and lilts and vicious delight. "To die all over again because that is the only way he can get through. He is cruel, the number one is, cruel cruel cruel. He doesn't care for you, little Keehl, he cares for the fact that this place demands a soul and it suits him better to deliver yours than his own. He wants to get to the other side, you see! What little lies did he tell you, my friend? What little lies did the number one tell you?"

And then Beyond emerges. He is skeletal, with broad shoulder and wide cheekbones that make Mello think of days in the dark and days spent wishing so hard that you were someone else that you waste away into nothing. He's wearing something ragged and white, and looking again, he sees it's the old remains of a prison psych ward jumpsuit. Winding up and around his skin, in odd patterns, are the tracks of flame.

Mello cannot help but notice how they have spared his face.

He advances, in awkward, predatory steps, on Mello. His teeth are still bared and Mello wills his body to move, sends signals to every muscle, tries to force himself backwards.

And, miraculously, the space between them widens.

There is a second, a split second, where all the feeling rushes back into Mello's limbs and he is suddenly very aware of how to move, how to run, how to _fight_. It fades as quickly as it came, but that's all he needed – they are still there, his arms, his legs, and he's going to _use_ them. He forces himself around, forces himself to remember how to put one foot in front of the other, and not knowing where he is headed or what he will find, he runs.

***

L can feel the darkness prickling closer.

He knows Mello can't feel it. Or that if he does, he won't know what it means, or will just dismiss it as another sensation of the storm. L doesn't blame him. He'd thought that, the first time – he'd just let it go. And then all of a sudden –

He grips Mello's hand tighter. _Don't let go_, he thinks. _Don't let go, then when it comes, you'll have something to tether yourself to, something outside the dark –_

Then he feels Mello's hand slip out of his and the distant sound of a candle hissing out, and the heavy, soundless, crushing blanket of black descends.

There was a reason, really, that he did not panic earlier when looking at the horizon. There was a reason the tendrils of fear did not snake their way out and send his heart into a frenzy. That reason was because once you have been here, in the middle of it, with the darkness stretching forever in every direction, just looking at it won't scare you anymore.

Nothing will scare you anymore.

L closes his eyes. At least, he thinks he closes his eyes. _And here it comes_. He cannot see a single thing but he is becoming painfully, awfully aware of every aspect of his body – he can feel the tremble spread down his fingers, feel the hairs prickle on his neck. He is oh so keenly aware of the heaviness of his legs, the heat of his clothes as they shift against him, aware of everything and aware of it so individually and so minutely he can feel himself caving in.

_The collapse of Gestalt._

He hears the sound of the first blade begin to whir, and seconds later, there is a flash of silver in the dark and a sickeningly familiar, ice cold pain spreading through his arm.

Then the whirring sound of metal and metal and shadow intensifies.

And then, spot by spot, flecks of silver sparkle and disappear.

He cannot track them. He cannot avoid them. Everything he was good at, everything he knows, every single thing he has ever learnt is no good about invisible threats in the dark. He can feel himself shaking and can feel nausea bubbling up inside him, and he can feel a heavy and chilling fog around him in the shadow.

Then one by one he hears the blades rise upwards, the hideous sound of steel against rock echoing through the dark.

Then everything stops.

And then they descend.

***

Mello does not know how long he has been here.

Time, he is realising, does not pass the same way anymore. He is not entirely sure that it has been passing at all since he arrived here. Since he died. He is feeling slow, and heavy, and it is all he can do to convince himself he is still moving. He thinks he has his hands splayed out, somewhere in the unbreakable darkness, feeling around for anything solid, anything tangible. But here, in this place, he isn't sure. He isn't sure. The closeness of the blackness is the worst thing he has ever felt. It is impenetrable and muffling and thick and he has this awful, sneaking feeling that _something is out there_.

Every now and again he can hear Beyond's laughter. Sometimes it is close, sometimes he's put distance between them, and sometimes he is sure he can feel hot and rancid breath curl against his ear and the shrieking laughter split his mind.

And at the back of it all, behind the shadows and behind the fear and behind the silence, he can feel himself slipping.

There is no noise but he knows that Beyond is still in pursuit. He isn't sure what's doing this to him, what's making him run, but there's this strange kind of panic creeping its way through his limbs. It's this feeling like, _you're gonna die unless you run_. And it's mad, he knows it's mad, because he's dead already, but all of Beyond's talk of souls and second deaths and all this _darkness_ has got his mind playing –

Flash of red, flash of white; _"BOO!"_

This time, when Beyond's wasted face and wild eyes materialise barely a breath from his own, Mello _hears_ the scream rip from his throat.

Beyond is not laughing anymore. His eyes are narrowed into slits of rouge and there is something altogether more sinister about the curl of his lips now. Mello tries to back away, but nothing he's doing is making any difference. Beyond remains as close as ever.

_And he is getting closer_.

Mello feels fixed and frozen as Beyond's face inches inexorably closer, until Mello can feel their eyelashes brush when they blink. Beyond's forehead presses against his, and it is as cold as ice water. The heat of his breath whispers against Mello's lips and Mello shudders, violently and instinctively. A low and dark memory of laughter slips from Beyond's throat.

"I think I'll keep you, little Keehl," he whispers, and Mello feels a skinny hand wind into his hair. "You and I are really quite alike, you know. We will both never be L...he is the reason we have both lost the lives we should have led...he is the reason we are both dead...and he is the reason we have lived our lives in second place." Beyond's voice has risen to a rasping hiss and he shifts forward, until he is cheek to clammy cheek with Mello, and he brings his lips against his ear. "You know it's true, little Keehl...you and I could have been so much _more_...we are the strong ones, the mad ones, the ones with fire in our steps! And because of _him_...and now he has brought you here and left you to the dark lands. What a hero he is!"

Mello is suddenly aware that he can see again. Not very far, and not very much, but he can see his hands, his feet, his body – and how close Beyond's raggedy frame has come to his own. Beyond that, there is nothing but the encroaching dark.

"That's not true." Mello steadies his voice, and tries to pull away from Beyond. He can't move. "L isn't – L is helping me. He's taking me to –"

"To your friend?" Mello can feel Beyond's smirk, and as he draws breath for his next words, his tongue runs along the edge of Mello's ear. "Who exactly, little Keehl, told you your friend was in danger in the first place?"

"L," Mello says, without thinking, and then it hits him. "L told me."

Beyond's chuckle is drier this time, but louder, curling into his mind. "Yes he did, didn't he? And I expect he told you there are only two ways out of the waiting room, too...I expect he told you this was the only way to go..."

Mello stands stock still and now it is horror that freezes him in place. Could it...could that be true? Could L – _L_, his hero, his idol, the man he's built all his ideals and all his principles and all of everything about himself around – could L have tricked him?

"Why?"

His voice is echoing around in the dark, and it bounces back to him softly and softly, and it strikes him how wide and empty and black this place must be.

"I already told you." Beyond's voice drops to a murmur, warm and with a trickling edge of certainty that is beginning to work its way inside Mello's mind. "He wants you to die here. He wants you to lose your soul to this place so he can pass through. And he knew...oh, he is a clever one, because he knew, did L, that the only person I would be more interested in meeting than _him_ would be _you_."

Beyond's hand is still tangled in his hair. Mello becomes are that he is trembling at about the same moment Beyond brings a jagged fingernail to rest underneath his eye. Mello can feel him pull his lower eyelid down very gently. The air is cold against the exposed heat of the wet skin.

"How does it feel?" Beyond croons, and he drags another finger up the side of Mello's face, raking a hard red line over his only unspoilt cheek. "How does it feel, little Keehl, to be _betrayed_ this way? To find out that all you are is a useful _thing_ for the great L – that he does not actually care? How does it _feel_ to feel like _me_?"

Mello cannot stop himself shuddering now. He can barely keep still, and he brings his arms up around himself. The closeness and awfulness of Beyond, the thought that L could have just – and worse, deeper, the knowledge that now, he has no idea where Matt is, or what is happening to him, or how he can help him...

"You're going to spend all of eternity in the darkness with me, you know. That's what he wanted for you. That's why he came for you in the waiting room. Because you could be _useful_..."

Beyond tightens his grip on his hair and pushes down, and Mello feels his knees collapse. He crumbles to the ground, hands splaying forward, and the ground is cool and hard and feels like rock. And then Beyond is _everywhere_, pressing against his side, one hand behind him, one hand wrapped around, holding him in some kind of distorted embrace.

"You belong to me now, Mihael...you're with me now."

The hand on his cheek shifts and Beyond's thumb moves over his mouth, and he slides his nail between Mello's lips. Mello feels his bottom lip being peeled down as the pressure on his eye releases. Beyond's hand is still tight in his hair, holding him like a ragdoll, keeping him from collapsing to the floor completely, and as he feels a tongue snake out and run over the tendrils of skin beginning to form over his exposed flesh his stomach lurches. He wants to throw up. He wants to die.

Beyond's tongue curls round to where his nail is pinning Mello's lip in place. He traces the tip over his own nail and he is so close now Mello is not sure he can tell whose breaths are whose.

"Tilt and turn, little Keehl, tilt and turn...never matters what you did, never matters what you do...you will be the skinny little second best for ever and for ever...trapped in the dark with _me_."

Trapped in the dark with Beyond, Mello can feel his mind steadily unravelling. The heat and stench of the other man's impossible breath and the feel of his skin fill his senses.

"Tilt and turn and twist and tear and bend and break and groan and gasp –" Beyond is hissing against his mouth and he cannot make sense of it. He feels something tight and hot in his throat, he feels himself shaking so uncontrollably, he feels Beyond's tongue wet and warm against his bottom lip. "_Mine_, little Keehl, forever in the dark..."

"_No_."

Then, there is the sound of flesh connecting with flesh, and a sudden coldness wraps around Mello as the heat of Beyond is send skidding into the darkness. There's a snarl and the sound of him jumping to his feet and he stalks back into sight, into the impossible globe of semi-light that seems to be surrounding them here.

Mello looks up. Standing above him, unhunched, with a look of ferocious anger bright in his eye, is L.

"Run away, Beyond. Go back to skulking in your shadows."

"You!" Beyond's face distorts into a picture of hatred and rage. "How did you find me?"

L remains impassive, the same silent threat hanging in his eyes. "Run away," he repeats.

Beyond straightens up, and there's the sound of bones grating and clicking against each other as he does. He reaches L in two long strides and squares up to him. He's a few inches taller, and would have been bulkier if he hadn't wasted away to all but nothing.

"Make me, L." Beyond's voice has become feral. "This is my place of strength, not yours. _L is after Beyond Birthday in the dark lands!_"

Without warning, L strikes him once, hard, across the face.

"You are a fool and a madman and you have no strength anywhere."

The sheer vitriolic coldness of L's words is astonishing. The entire temperature seems to drop, and a kind of iced-over fury emanates from the dead detective.

"What?!" Beyond's face contorts again. "How dare you!"

He flies at L, his scream ripping through the darkness and quiet, reaching out his ragged nails to his face –

- And deftly, L sidesteps, and twists his body into a kick that sends Beyond skuttering into the shadows again.

"I think you will remember who I learnt that from, BB."

There is a growl and Beyond reappears. But this time, L does not hesitate. He advances on him, all silence and anger and swift capoeira attacks that land Beyond on the stony floor with the bare flat of L's foot pressed on his chest.

"Why are you still scuttling around, BB? Don't you have places to go? This is only supposed to be a temporary holding, you know."

Beyond makes a hateful noise deep in throat. "Same could be said of you, L."

"I have unfinished business that I will shortly be able to attend to. If your bitterness is going to keep you here then you know what's going to happen to you. Why do you persist?"

Beyond's eyes narrow and a twisted, detached kind of smile tangles his lips. "Demand me nothing," Beyond snarls, "what you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word."

L looks down at him coldly. "Do not fool yourself, Beyond. You do not have the graceful refuge of motiveless malignancy. Everything you do you do from hatred of me and petty vengeance. You are going to destroy yourself here." L removes his foot. "Go away, B."

Beyond remains silent, but there is a hatred burning behind his eyes that will never die. He clambers to his feet, shoots one last resentful look at L, and disappears into the darkness.

L drops down next to Mello, crouching onto his heels. He brings gentle hand up to Mello's head. His eyes are still focused on the floor, but he can feel L's slender fingers working to undo the knot Beyond has made in his hair.

"Mello," he says, softly, "are you alright?"

The concern in his tone is such a stark and sudden contrast to the lechery and viciousness filling Beyond's words that it tears something in Mello apart. He reacts instinctively, animalistically, and lashes out. He swings at L's hand, and the force of it sends him sprawling backwards onto the ground. L staggers backwards, and gets to his feet.

"_Get away from me!_" The words sound high and childish and bounce back at him in the dark.

L stares at him, in shock. "Mello?"

"Why did you bring me here?" he demands, his voice shaking worse than it had ever shaken during his life. "_Why did you bring me here?"_

L is still looking blank. "You know why, Mello. We have to pass through here. Beyond it is the shinigami realm, and that's where –"

"How do I know? How do I know? How do I know you're not _lying _to me?! For all I know you've brought me here to die!"

"Mello, you're already –"

"You said it yourself," Mello says, his voice low and hard and tearing at his throat. "You said it, there are worse things than life. How do I know you're not – that you're not trying to -?!"

He stops. He has no more words. Instead, he feels hot tears swelling up behind his eyes, feels hysteria biting its way into his mind, and struggles to hold it down.

And then, he looks at L's face. His expression is one of purest heart-break, of the sadness felt by a father when he learns his son no longer trusts him. "Mello..."

And then, Mello really does cry. He doubles over, pressed against the ground, shaking, and weeping, and harsh sobs rip through him. All the terror and the panic and the hate and the horror and disgust and heat and cold he has felt in these dark lands takes hold of him. He can feel himself coming apart, and all he knows is the wracking anguish washing through him.

He does not know precisely when L crouched down beside him again. But when he begins to calm down, when he feels the waves of nausea brought on by thoughts like _what if L hadn't come_ subside, he feels the slender fingers combing through his hair, and wiping the sweat from his brow.

When he finally falls quiet, L asks tentatively, "Mello?"

He draws a long, shuddering breath. "I'm sorry," he mumbles.

L laughs dryly. "Oh, Mello. You have nothing to apologise for. If you had seen how I reacted when I encountered this place for the first time..."

He trails off, and Mello does not press him. He does not think he wants to. Instead, he says, "he said such – the things he said – was that really Beyond Birthday?"

L nods sombrely. "The real thing, I am afraid. Dead, of course. He was killed by Kira."

Mello drags the heel of his hand across his unscarred cheek, roughly drying his tears. He glances across the welt left by Beyond's nail, and feels sick again. But this time, he manages to suppress the nausea, to push it aside.

"What did you mean?" he asks. "About – you said about if he stayed here..."

"If he stays here, he will become nothingness," L says grimly. "He will pass on to Mu. He will exist as nothing but a disembodied feeling of hatred and anger and loneliness."

Mello stares up at him. "Is that what happens to – to everyone?" _Could it have happened to me_ hangs unsaid in the air.

"No," L tells him, laying a hand on his shoulder. "It is only for those who refuse to try...who cling to the feeling they were cheated from life. Who refuse to admit there can be anything more. Who will not let go of the feelings that guided them to their downfall."

One other thing sticks out in Mello's mind, and so he asks, "what's your unfinished business? I mean, if you don't – move on – or whatever – won't you...go to Mu?"

L shrugs. "Maybe I will. After I have helped you here, I will only have one piece left, and that lies not too far ahead, I think."

Mello frowns. "Me? I was some of your unfinished business?"

L smiles down at him fondly, and once again, Mello is strongly reminded of a father looking at his only son. "I know what you're like, Mello. I knew you were bound to do something that would land you in the waiting room instead of on the platform."

Sitting up, Mello brings a hand to his head. "This doesn't make much sense, does it?"

L's smile turns rueful. "One thing I am learning here is that even in life, very little ever really did." He gets up, and offers Mello his hand. Mello reaches to take it, but then, he stops.

There are fresh white scars running all over L's palm, curling round his whole hand, disappearing under his sleeve.

"L," he breathes, aghast. "What -?"

L follows his gaze and his face grows dark. "This place has its ways of getting to everyone, Mello. You are a strong, strong young man. But what is it you have always doubted?"

"I don't –"

"Your mind, Mello. You have doubted your mind and you have doubted your ability to ever live up to what the orphanage wanted you to be."

Mello cannot tear his eyes away from the horrible white scars. "I suppose..."

"And you have always, always relied on your body. You were always the fastest, the strongest, and you know that. Even when you were young. This place, this darkness...it froze you. It took away your strength. And Beyond...he was only too happy to play on your doubts."

He swallows heavily. "How do you know what he said to me?"

"Someone was watching you."

"What?! Who?"

A ghost of a smile flickers on L's lips. "I will show you." His hand is still outstretched. Hesitantly, Mello takes it.

"So," he asks, slowly, uncertain if he really wants to know. "What...um, what happens to you in here?"

L hangs his head a little, and looks up at Mello from underneath the shadow of his fringe. "My weakness is somewhat the opposite of yours. My mind, I have never doubted. It is my sole skill. My weakness is in my body. I am skilled in capoeira, yes, but in physical strength, in swiftness and grace of movements, in physical instincts..." he shakes his head. "Imagine a hundred invisible daggers flying at you out of the darkness. The only glimpse of them you get is a sudden flash just before they strike, to torment you into thinking that if you were simply a little smarter, a little quicker, you could evade them. But they cannot be evaded."

Mello's jaw has gone slack. "That _happened_ to you?"

L raises his head. "We all face our demons in here, Mello. Many of the souls I have seen enter here do not re-emerge. I cannot express how proud I am of you that you have withstood it."

It is Mello's turn to hang his head. "I wouldn't have," he mutters. "Not if you –"

"I think you would, Mello," L says kindly. He is smiling. "I have met and seen and spoken to a very great number of people in my time – and trust me, because of this place, I have had perhaps more than I should have – but it is a true rarity to find someone of as strong a spirit and of as noble a mind as you. You withstand. You endeavour. For all the ill you may have done, Mello...you have a good heart."

Mello opens his mouth. He does not know what to say. He feels something twist and swell inside him, but before he can land on any kind of right words, L has turned, and headed into the darkness.

"This way, Mello. Our guide is not far."

"Guide?"

Mello is unsteady on his legs, but stumbles after L as quickly as he can. He feels the darkness drop around him once again.

"L?!"

"Don't worry," comes L's disembodied voice. "Just keep going straight ahead."

Mello obeys, and emerges into another pool of semi-light like the one before. L is standing there alone.

"So where's the guide?" he asks.

L smiles. There is something strange and wicked twisting at the edges of it, but before Mello can wonder why, it becomes clear enough.

With a sound like the clattering of old bones and the sweep of a curtain over a coffin, a huge, winged figure looms from the darkness.

"_Hyuk hyuk hyuk..._"

"Mello," L says, "I would like you to meet Ryuk. He is a shinigami. He's going to show us the way."


	5. The City of Stones

Disclaimer: Don't own Death Note, lyrics: Jack's Mannequin, MFEO.

Note: A much, much shorter chapter. I'm not comfortable with shinigami. Most of the set up is here, in this shorter chapter, which should prepare everything for chapter 6, which will be conflict, dialogue and shinigami heavy. I thought I'd get this up so I can just start on that when I next sit down to write.

So, yeah, this was basically abandoned. But of all my stories this was one I wanted to come back to most. And I'm doing it. Even if there's another huge break, like with Passages, this will be updated, and so will that. We'll get there. I'll get there. Step by step.

x

The City of Stones

_you can breathe  
you can breathe now  
you can breathe but  
the air is running out_

_

* * *

_

"You were always a weird one, L."

Mello looks sideways at the shinigami. The darkness is dissipating, fading into grey with every step. The death god moves through the air beside them, close to silent, breaking the air with bony wings.

L does not respond at first. He lopes along at his usual pace, eyes half-cast downwards, his face blank (which Mello takes to mean thoughtful). Ryuk watches him with a strange, fixed smile.

"I hung around you for a long time, you know. You could only see me for a bit of it."

"Are you Kira's shinigami?" Mello asks.

Ryuk swivels his head sideways, giving Mello a frightening, topsy-turvy grin. _"Hyuk hyuk hyuk_." The laugh is already getting annoying. "Like a pet, or something?"

Mello's seized by the sudden, irrational desire to say 'yeah, like his pet'. This shinigami rubs him the wrong way. He isn't like Sidoh, not at all. Sidoh was soft-edged and fumbling, and deep down in Ryuk is some hard and shining edge of metal, sharp like the blade of a knife. Mello can see it in his shark-toothed smile.

Ryuk isn't waiting for his answer. "I was the one who dropped my Death Note, yeah. He just picked it up."

"Light Yagami?"

Ryuk chuckled.

"What happened to him?" Mello demands. "Did he die? What happened to Near?"

Ryuk turns his head away, and looks at L, who speaks at last.

"It's pointless to ask him anything," he says. "If there is something he wants to tell you, he'll find a way of making you ask."

"That doesn't make me sound very nice," the shinigami says petulantly. Mello thinks he probably hates him. He thinks L is insane to trust their journey – Matt's life – in the hands of this _thing_.

"Ryuk, you aren't very nice." L's voice is bland, and he does not look up.

"_Hyuk hyuk hyuk_…I suppose not. I'm not the one who killed you, though."

Back before this all started, Mello wouldn't have noticed it. The harsh, sudden sharpening of the line of L's shoulders, the way his lips stayed so still – his brain has clicked from off to on, instantly engaging with the situation. Mello could sit and watch L for days – his body is a map of his mind, if you know how to read it, and his mind is a map of all the wonders of the universe.

He wants to know who killed him.

"I know Light was behind it," L says, in the same unremarkable tone.

Ryuk snorts; a sound like bones on drum skin. "Light likes to think he is behind everything."

_Likes, is. Present tense. Is he still alive?_

Ryuk won't say.

"He left an awful lot to chance," L says, with the certainty of a man who knows he is lying.

Ryuk chuckles again, and the darkness is almost gone now. Mello can see shapes on the horizon; crags, craters, mounds of dust and pillars of stone. He wonders, briefly, where they are, and then he remembers what L told him before. They are in the Shinigami Realm.

It is dark here, but a different kind of darkness to the pitch they had emerged from. Here it is a grey kind of dark, the darkness of nothingness. The land seems dry and stale, the air hangs still and breezeless, and the creatures that move in the distance lumber and creak like rocking chairs. The pervading feel of death is everywhere, seeping into Mello's bones, crawling under his skin. Each step seems to take more effort, to feel more leaden, and though he is sure he is imagining it, he thinks he can hear the joints in his limbs start to grind with age and wear.

_I'm dying_, he thinks, a sudden flash of panic cracking like white across his brain.

_You're dead,_ his sense says back to him, and he feels his stomach drop unpleasantly, as he realises it all over again.

Dead, dead, dead, and here he is, in the land where death lays slain, and the creatures that covet the souls of the living go on and on forever.

A fear quite unlike what he felt facing Beyond creeps into Mello's mind. This isn't the frantic, claustrophobic feeling of being chased or abused. This is very, very different…a slow shiver of unease, a sense of disquiet, a heavy veil of foreboding draped over his brain, shutting down his thoughts.

This is a bad place to be.

"You and I have a deal," L says, and he sounds distant. Mello stops and looks around. L and Ryuk have stopped some paces back, and are facing one another.

"I always keep my promises," says the shinigami, and there is danger behind his pledge. Mello can feel it. "He can attest to that."

L nods, fractionally, and then looks up, and sees Mello watching.

"You can tell me the way?" L asks, and Ryuk bends forward, _crick-crick-crick_, until his treachery teeth are hovering next to L's pale ear. Mello cannot work out the words he murmurs into his ear, but there's an overpowering feeling coursing through him that he ought to stop it; that this can't bode well.

Ryuk straightens up. L's face has not changed, but his fists are clenched. Something is happening.

He turns to Mello. "This is where I leave you, then."

"What?"

"I'm not going the rest of the way," L explains calmly. "Ryuk will take you through safely. You can trust him."

_No I can't!_ screeched something in Mello's head, but he was having trouble getting his mouth around words. L was…leaving him? Here? He'd taken him out here, to these dead lands, to _leave_ him?

_He has brought you here and left you in the dark lands._

He could have sworn he felt his heart beating hard in his throat. He could have sworn he was struggling for breath. He could have sworn he was still alive.

"I'm going another way," L explains.

_I expect he told you this was the only way to go._

"Why?" Mello finds the word heavy and unusual in his mouth, immature.

Ryuk looms, teeth still barred. "The detective has some friends to meet."

There's a semisecond where a flash of irritation crosses L's face, before it's chased off my something indistinguishable. He walks towards Mello, seeming to cut through the swathes of dust and grey much more easily than Mello himself, and puts a hand on his shoulder. "This is the rest of my unfinished business, Mello. I came with you this far, to get you through, and because it was the only way I could –"

_- lose your soul to this place so he could pass through –_

"- get us both to where we needed to me. You have to go to Matt, Mello, and undo the damage you never meant to cause. I'm not invested in Matt the way you are, I won't make it through. I have other places to be."

"You promised you'd held me," Mello says thickly.

"I have," L says, and there is a look of desperate earnestness behind his black eyes. "If I go any further with you, we'll both fail. That'll be the end. You don't understand this place."

Mello shrugs his hand off. "You don't _tell_ me. Always treating me like I don't need to know –"

"Don't be an idiot, Mello." It isn't cutting – L says it like he's suggesting the best way to chop wood. "You're strong enough. And you know _enough._ You're going on alone."

"No," Mello says, and he can feel a pleading note creep into his voice. But L is pulling away, and Mello's feet stick in the ground, and L is leaving, leaving –

He is swallowed by the mist and dark, and only Ryuk is left with Mello in this cold, stone ruin of gods.

* * *

Mello refuses to look at Ryuk. Ryuk refuses to shut up.

"I don't think he ever really thought much of you," Ryuk is saying gleefully. Step after difficult step, Mello forces himself closer to the figures on the horizon. Anger is bubbling inside him, resentment is brewing, and fear coils in a small pit of his gut. He doesn't know what lies ahead anymore, and he doesn't have anyone there to help him.

"He always seemed to think you were an idiot who liked blowing things up."

He was alone in the enemy's territory with a traitor as a guide.

"I guess that made you difficult to read, though. He wouldn't have got got if it wasn't for you."

Mello spins round at that, fast as a whip crack. "What?"

But Ryuk just hangs there, grinning, and suddenly untalkative.

Mello growls, and carries on.

"This way," Ryuk says, sometime later. "That way's a trick. You'll look like you're getting somewhere, and then you'll stop."

The shinigami crooks his head in a different direction. Mello looks at the way he was taking. It doesn't seem like it's going to lead him wrong. Ryuk's way seems to lead off into the nowhere-distance.

Don't trust him. Trust him. Lose time, walk into a trap…

_L trusted him._

_L left me._

_Matt trusted _me.

_I got him killed._

_It probably saved the fucking world._

_What's life anyway?_

_Death._

_Whatever._

Mello changes direction, and follows Ryuk into the emptiness, looking over his shoulder at the distant figures of the shinigami.

Then, suddenly, the shinigami are straight ahead. Mello lets out a small shout of surprise, and Ryuk snickers.

"I told you so. I know this world. I've spent enough time here," he adds, sniffily.

Mello doesn't answer. He casts Ryuk a black look, and carries on striding forward.

The walk feels like it takes hours. The figures keep slipping further and further away, and every now and then, Ryuk corrects his direction. Mello obeys, doubtful and suspicious, ready to fight whatever may pop out of the blankness.

All the while, he thinks of L, and Matt.

That's his last chance here, now. He's abandoned here, in the middle of nothing, in the dragon's lair, and that's the only thing he's got keeping him moving. Somewhere, Matt might be in danger.

He has to keep going.

But the walk is taking so _long_, and maybe Ryuk has been steering him wrong after all. He is three paces away (he's been counting – fifteen thousand and thirty six, fifteen thousand and thirty seven, at fifteen thousand and forty we stop) from rounding on Ryuk and calling him out on his deception when all of a sudden, he is surrounded.

Mello jumps backwards in shock. The shinigami seem to have come from nowhere. He looks round and realises that he has arrived at the rocky plateau he had been aiming towards, without even realising it. _It's a trick of this place_, he tells himself. _Nothing real can work here._

The death gods prowl around him. There are six – seven, counting Ryuk, who has touched ground and is standing at Mello's shoulder. They are beastly, animalistic, inhuman. Some have stunted faces, some have long, bony noses, most are tall and some are stooped and winged. Jaws protrude, skin shines sickly, eyes are narrowed malevolently. Somewhere, out of the wind, comes the sound of cackling.

Mello is afraid, but he will not show it. Ryuk has led him into a trap.

"What, oh what, oh what do we have here?" says one of the shinigami. Its voice crackles like dry paper, and it looks at Mello with dead eyes from beneath a Native American headdress.

"Another one of Ryuk's toys," another says, disgruntled. This shinigami is huge, sprawling, a mess of mess.

"Brought him here to play?"

"What shall we do?"

"This is more fun than gambling."

"Shut up, you love gambling."

"But this is _exciting_."

The shinigami are circling, and it occurs to Mello that though he is scared, he is not nearly as scared as the situation demands.

"Leave me alone," he snarls, and takes a step forward. The shinigami draw back as one, seeming surprised by his boldness. But they swarm back quickly, pressing closer, sneers and smiles and sickly gapes upon their faces. There are eyes everywhere, and there is so much bone.

There is the sound of something leathery and crackling, and a shadow falls over Mello. He looks up. Ryuk has spread his wings. He places strange shaped hands on Mello.

"None of you will touch him," Ryuk says, and still, that smile won't leave his face. The shinigami look like figurines, like they've been sat in this dust for so long that they can't move anymore. They're frozen.

A mutter and mumble goes up amongst the gathered. "And why not?" someone demands.

"That's none of your business, Gukku. I'm taking him through."

A shinigami hisses, and snakes to the front. It is ferocious-looking, with sharp, sharp teeth. "And who says that?"

Ryuk laughs – a real laugh, this time, not a chuckle, and a shiver runs through Mello. He is aware, again, like he was struck before, of how much dark power lurks beneath the blue skin of the beast behind him. "Do not cross me, Kinddara Guivelostain. We are passing through."

The other shinigami – Kinddara Guivelostain – hisses again, and this time, it sounds mirthful. "Oho, I shall not cross _you_, Ryuk, none of us can be bothered for a fight. We're just interested in some fun. We shan't cross –" there's a beat, a single beat, where she pauses, and her eyes land on Mello as she says "you", and everything goes black.


	6. COLLAPSE

**c..o..l..l..a..p..s..e**

To Matt's ears, the sound of gunfire is akin to the triumph blasts of the orchestra of heaven.

No, perhaps I am not being fair. I shall say that to _my_ ears, listening through Matt's, the sound of gunfire was akin…etc. You probably caught that the first time. You're hardly dull, despite the act. You can keep up with me, can't you?

A curious thing happens to the body after death. I had already experienced it once, of course. I know that you have, too, a hundred times more than I, but it would please me to relate the experience anyway.

The heart stops. The blood in the body suddenly has nothing pushing it around, and so soon, it stops, too. The brain, starved of blood, begins to shut off. Pieces of it close down and turn inwards, and little by little, that remarkable spark that transforms us from sacks of meat to veritably _existing _dwindles and dies. The body, in that moment, begins to decay. The process will not be seen for some time yet, I know, but it is in that moment that the actual state of being changes, I think. As I have experienced, anyway.

I am boring you, I apologise. But I appreciate your patience. You know, I think, how much I enjoy learning new things, and it has been some years now indeed.

So our theoretical body, it has died. The heart and brain and blood have stilled, and now there is only one thing left to be accounted for: the soul. I was not, in life, a religious man, but it would be wrong to deny the fact that there was an intangible _something_ that set us all apart. We had our own motivations, likes, passions, strengths. Our unique fears, weaknesses and breaking points. There must have been something there, something incredible, that a mere decaying of meat cannot contain. I am right, and I know it, else I would not be here, having this conversation with you.

Yes, I suppose I am monologing more than I am conversing. But you are responding, are you not? Therefore, in the literal definition…

I never promised not to get smart with you. I know better than that. I would never be able to restrain myself.

But, ah, yes, the curious thing. It is the departure of the – for lack of a better term – soul. No, rather, it is the moments when it does not depart. I think out of all my life, and all my death, that time saw me more frightened than I have ever been. For the first part of death – and I have come now to believe the time is different for everyone, but the fact remains, it is the first part – the soul remains.

The body dies, and stills, the tongue grows heavy, the flesh freezes, the blood pools. The soul stays. You are awake in a castle of flesh. A prison of bones.

In those times you do not know if it will end, or if this is eternity now. You do not even know if you will sleep.

You don't. But you do leave.

It comes eventually, slowly, and it starts like pins and needles in the extremities you no longer have. You can feel yourself – your soul, your self in the most literal sense – being peeled apart. It's a painless sensation, but there is the strangest feeling of losing yourself. You are falling apart.

Then all of a sudden, you have come loose. Your soul is cut away from the only thing that tethered it to any plane, and all out of nowhere, there is nothing. You do not stand and see your body, you do not drift into white light. It is simply that you are, in one moment, and in the next, you are not. When you open your eyes, you are somewhere else.

For me, and for, I think, anyone like me, it is the waiting room at the surgery.

That is the whole next phase, of course, and is not part of the curious thing that happens to the body after death.

Where was I, to begin with? Oh yes, yes, the sound of gunfire in Matt's ears.

My ears.

I was possessing him by this stage, naturally.

Yes, alright, I know possessing is a strong word. I know that ghosts don't exist in the manner my race conceived them. Allow me my moments, will you not? I lived a very strict life of logic, and it was all pulled apart at the end, so I shall dally in my superstition and melodrama if I wish.

Thank you. If you keep interrupting, I shall never reach my point, and you shall be forced to listen to me all day. I know you get bored, but truly, there must be limits to even your capacity for the human ego's habit of endless nattering.

Matt's death, then. I had been lurking within him for a while – I'd say a year or so – nudging him in the right direction when I had to, trying to fill time. It's a lonely afterlife, really. My part is. This part. The waiting room. I was crouched inside him, behind his soul so it wouldn't see me, muttering to him whenever he started going wrong. And by going wrong, I meant going too far away from Mello. Mello is a loose cannon – was a loose cannon? – and as smart as he was, I knew he needed someone beside him to temper him, ground him. I was not wrong. He came through in the end, didn't he? They both did. My favourites. I pick well.

I am glad that they got on, though. It would have been a shame to go through all that trouble finding Matt just to find Mello didn't like him, and I had to look for someone else.

I think too far ahead, sometimes. It hurts being inside my head. There's so very much that needs to be thought about.

I was waiting for Matt to die. I suppose that was my second, secret purpose in manipulating him towards Mello again. To be perfectly fair, they needed each other, and it worked out well, and I could have just as easily sat inside Mello and waited for him to die, so it is not like I picked Matt out for death. It was much more convenient, though. Mello's soul would have made an odd bedfellow for mine. Matt is much more passive and watchful; it was a much more enjoyable ride.

Besides, if I had lurked in Mello, I couldn't have been ready when I got here, could I? I was pressed enough as it was. I thought he'd have lasted at least a longer after Matt went. I don't know what I'd have done if Matt went first.

Because that's the way, isn't it? You get one shot through the back door, one chance to find your way. And if everything isn't in place, if everything isn't ready, you get lost in the land of the dead. I was lucky. I found Beyond, and he – in his ramblings – gave me the insights I needed. I sought the world beyond the darkness, I found my way down, and I did what I needed to in order to remain there – I found a body and I nestled deep inside it. And it worked. Unsurprisingly. I have had only a few ideas ever turn sour on me.

I _am_ brilliant. Don't get sarcastic with me, or I shan't involve you in any of the fun. No, I will simply find someone else.

I will, you know.

Matt took me where I needed to be, and I learnt what I needed about Mello. I had everything planned and set up for when it happened – his death, I mean. I was relying on a lot of things here – his natural resistance, for one, to the hands of fate; his temper; his unpredictability. It is a favourite ploy of mine, you know, predicting unpredictability. I have gotten really quite good at it.

Matt died, and I arrived. He gave me the route to the waiting room that I so badly needed, if I was ever to achieve my ends. And you know me, friend. I am not one for leaving business unfinished. I am pleased to find that not even the grave can stop me. Not even the rules of death stand a chance against I.

Come now, come now. Look at what I have achieved. Look at what I have prepared. Look at how Mello struggles, even know, with Beyond. Look at how I have staged this. Look at what I have done in life, and now, in death! I am permitted a little hubris. I have earned it.

It is a shame, though, I suppose, that the waiting room only opens for one soul per death. Matt was brave, and he had perhaps deserved better than the path I set him on.

Soft? No, I'm not getting soft. Oh, well, perhaps a little. I was very fond of him. I am allowing Mello the chance to save him, am I not? Yes, yes, mock me for my sins.

It was a good idea of yours, I think. I am not above offering credit where it is due. I did not know about the trade that He would offer, and I am pleased you told me. I was not sure what to do with Matt, not at all, until you came along.

You do love to meddle, don't you?

I know. We all have our vices.

He loves him, you know. Mello, I mean. He loves Matt, you can see it. This is a terrible journey for anyone to make, and he is so rash I thought he might be overwhelmed at the start of it. But he is driven by something, can you see? To come this far it must be love.

Don't insult me. You know I'm powered by something a lot more potent, and a lot less friendly.

Yes. Best served as cold as the grave, perhaps, har har, pardon the pun.

Oh, oh, hang on, I think Beyond is getting nasty. I think I had better go down and sort it out.

Yes, I'll see you soon, yes. I'll come and collect you. Keep quiet, of course. You can gloat to him about all our designs later, if you absolutely must, but don't ruin things so early. Be a good sport, or you'll miss out on the fun.

So here it all lies. Matt is traded to the Shinigami King, for Mello's indiscretion, and He is promised another soul if Mello fails in collecting him. That's two Death Notes, and one for me, as a prize for service. Mello shall have a fair chance, of course. He has always had the option of a fair chance.

The road will open for me when he emerges from this darkness, and I shall take it. It's a short walk then, you said, though I expect you are lying and it will take me hours. No, of course I don't trust you. I'm only sure you won't tell Mello because then it'll mean you won't get to see the final bout.

I never cease to be amazed by your capacity to avoid boredom in such a dreary place.

You are the closest thing I have had to a friend, Ryuk. You are my best friend, in fact.

Ha ha ha, yes, I know. It's precisely what I said to him. That's sort of the joke.

I'll see you in a while, then. I'd better go collar Beyond before he makes a mess.

You're right, that is overdramatic. Mello can probably handle himself a while longer. But still.

I pick my successors well, don't I? Three of them, here and there, and each one a prize.

No, I really had better go. Else there'll be L to pay.

Yes. Yes, it did sound like 'hell'.

That's sort of the joke.


End file.
